by Saint,Nic
“Hey! You!” he said, addressing Jingoist rather sternly.
In response, Jingoist took a swing at Peverell and seemed surprised when his club didn’t connect this time.
“Ha!” said Peverell. “That tickles!” In retaliation, he streaked over to his attacker, expertly dangling from the chandelier like an elderly, ghostly Errol Flynn, and gave it a vigorous pull as he hovered over Jingoist. The entire crystal contraption came loose from its moorings and crashed down on the priest. But instead of going right through him, like the statuettes, the chandelier actually connected with its intended target, crashing down on his head and knocking him to the floor. Perhaps the fact that Peverell held onto the chandelier gave it the extra heft it needed to make a real impact,
“Ouch,” commented Jarrett as he watched. “That must have hurt.”
“But how…” Harry began.
Before she could finish her sentence, Jingoist clambered to his feet, his face a mask of rage, pieces of chandelier dangling from his ears. With a loud roar, he lunged at Peverell now, but instead of flattening the old ghost, he simply sailed right through him, skidding to a halt a few feet beyond.
And it was then that a thought occurred to Jarrett. If Peverell could take a swipe at the Absinthian priest and do some real damage, why couldn’t they as well? Perhaps it was all a matter of… intention. So he picked up another one of those hideous figurines, this time of Lady Chatterley fondling a puppy, and hurled it at Jingoist with all his might, in his mind’s eye envisioning a scene where it connected with the man’s receding brow. There was a dull clunk and then Jingoist gave him a stupid look. He’d actually hit the guy!
“Hey! It worked!” he cried. “You have to throw with intent!”
“You think so?” Harry asked dubiously.
“Just give it a try,” he suggested, picking up another statuette.
Both he and Harry took a firm grip on their respective weapons of minor destruction, and so did Em herself. The three Lady Chatterleys described perfect arcs through the air, and Bang! They all connected with various parts of the evil priest’s corpus. This time he yelped in surprised shock and pain.
“It works!” Harry cried. “It really works!”
She quickly picked up another objet d’art and threw it with all her might. And for the next few minutes, the room was alive with a steady stream of erotic works of dubious artistic value raining down on the Chinese priest. Finally, the man could take no more of this abuse, and he rose up, emitting a loud roar of anguish, his club sailing through the air in Harry’s direction. Jarrett, without thinking, hurled himself into the club’s flight path, and before it could hit her, it hit him instead. And then he went down, landing on his cherished Harry Styles pillow, his face meeting Mr. Styles in a cloud of feathers. And then the designated heir of the Zephyr billions knew no more.
Chapter 37
When Darian came storming into the room, the show was over, or so it seemed. The place was wrecked beyond recognition, with debris wherever he looked, and stretched out on the floor was Zephyr, out for the count, Harry kneeling at his side, her face wet with tears.
“What happened?!” he thundered, looking around for the cause of the carnage.
“We were attacked,” his mother announced gravely, clutching her nightgown closer around her body and somberly staring at the wreckage at her feet. “And that shotgun of yours doesn’t work!” she added vehemently.
“Of course not,” he said. “It’s just a showpiece.”
“You could have told me,” she grumbled, kicking its remains with her foot. For some reason the shotgun now resembled a ball of macramé.
“Where’s the attacker?” he asked, pointing his gun this way and that, Constable Fret right on his heels mimicking his moves.
“He’s long gone, Darian. You’re too late.”
“Gone? How can he be gone?!” he cried as he checked the window. “And how the hell did he get past Tilda?!”
“Yeah, how the hell did he get past me, love?” Tilda put in.
“Because he wasn’t human,” his mother pointed out. “He was a demon!”
Darian quickly glanced at his mother, evaluating her mental state. And he decided he had no time for this nonsense. He was on the phone and summoning an ambulance and backup even as he crossed the room and crouched down next to Harry. He took Jarrett’s pulse and checked his vital signs. “He’ll live,” he finally announced with a touch of regret.
“Oh, Darian!” Harry cried. “He was almost killed! We all were!”
“But how? What happened?” he asked, deeply touched by her tears.
“It was Jingoist,” she said, and a cold chill settled around his heart.
“Jingoist! He was here, just now?”
She nodded vehemently. “We managed to drive him away by pelting him with your mother’s works of art.”
He glanced around, and only now noticed those silly erotic statuettes littering the floor. They’d been a present from an elderly bohemian aunt, and the only reason Mother had kept them was that the aunt was a frequent visitor and would invariably inquire after the state of her ‘art collection’.
“But where did he go?” he insisted.
She threw up her hands. “He disappeared. Vanished into thin air.”
He frowned. “That’s impossible, Harry. Think hard. Did he go through the window or the door or what?”
“He came in through the wall,” she said, “so I assume that’s the way he left as well. I woke up and saw the wall… writhing and twisting. Like a tornado? And then suddenly he was here, or at least his astral projection was here, swinging that horrible club of his. He was going after Jarrett first, but he managed to roll to the floor and escape, and then your mother came in with that glass of warm milk and those cookies—which was ever so nice of her, by the way—and then he came after the three of us.”
Darian listened as impassively as he could, but the story made no sense. No sense at all. “So mother came in with the milk and then what happened?”
“Peverell arrived, and he saved us. He knocked him out with the chandelier. And that’s when Jarrett had the bright idea that it was all about intention, see. With intention we could get at him, too. And then we did.”
He grasped at the one fact that wasn’t gibberish. “Who’s Peverell?”
“He’s the man my uncle sent in to protect me.”
“So where is he?”
She looked around as if noticing Peverell’s absence for the first time. “Oh, he’s gone, too. He must have…” She slowly turned those big eyes on him. “Peverell is not a real man, you see. He’s a ghost.” She paused. “Well, he used to be a real man, of course. Before he died, if you see what I mean.”
Darian clutched at his head with two hands, which was harder to do than it sounded since he was still holding his gun. “Wait a minute. Now wait just a darn minute! So you’re telling me Jingoist came in through the wall, and you were saved by a ghost? Is that what you’re telling me right now?”
She nodded. “That’s right. If not for Peverell…” She looked down at Jarrett. “And Jarrett, of course. If not for them, we’d all be dead right now.”
He shook his head and knew it was simply shock talking. Harry had gone through a harrowing experience and was in shock and didn’t know what she was saying. But then why did she seem so lucid? And why was his mother corroborating her story about the guy not being human?
“We better get you out of here,” he said, taking her by the elbow.
This was now a crime scene, and he was fully intent on finding out what had actually happened, as he was pretty sure it didn’t involve ghosts or astral projecting priests but actual criminals somehow slipping past Tilda unseen. There simply was no other explanation.
Harry sat at the table, rocking back and forth, hugging her knees. She was in Em’s living room, while all around her the place was now crawling with police and crime scene people dressed in funny white suits.
An ambulance had come
to pick up Jarrett and had taken him to the same hospital he’d gone to last time. The EMTs had told them he’d be fine. Just a minor bump to the frontal bone to accompany the one to the occipital bone he’d suffered before. Tilda Fret had taken both her and Em’s statements and had frowned a lot throughout, as if unsure what to make of them. Darian, for one, didn’t believe a word they said and insisted they were suffering from shock, and there simply had to be some rational explanation.
He wouldn’t find one, of course. Jingoist had simply manifested and then promptly disappeared again. Peverell was keeping her company now, looking rather smug, while Em was in the kitchen, incapable of watching her son’s colleagues trampling all over her apartment and abusing her precious rugs.
“I’m glad you caught on so quickly, Harry,” Peverell said. “All you need to do to take down a manifestation like that is to have the intent to do so.”
“I never caught on,” she muttered. “Jarrett did.” She suddenly wondered why Buckley hadn’t shown up throughout the entire ordeal. Wasn’t he supposed to be her guardian from beyond the veil? “Did you find Lakesha Fenton, by the way?”
“I did, but she couldn’t tell me where Jingoist was holed up either. Apparently he doesn’t have a place to stay, and when she left him he was renting a small room in Chinatown. I checked the place, and it’s empty now, of course. He must be moving around, making sure to stay off the radar.”
She glanced up. “Can’t you, you know, work your ghostly magic and find him some other way?”
The old ghost laughed. It sounded like a thousand rattlesnakes hissing in their underground lair, ready to strike. “Why, you think us ghosts have some kind of universal GPS? That we can track anyone anywhere anytime?”
“Well, don’t you?”
“Nope. Afraid it doesn’t work like that, Harry. We can pop up anywhere anytime, but that doesn’t mean we know where everyone is all the time. We’re not God. We’re not omniscient.”
This fact seemed to irk the skeletal businessman somewhat, and Harry imagined that there were times Peverell Wardop thought he was God.
“But you do know where Brian Rutherford is, right?”
“That’s different. He and I have a relationship. But you can hardly expect me to keep track of all seven billion inhabitants of Earth, nor of all its former inhabitants. I’d go nuts if I had to do that.”
“Pity,” she murmured, her chin sinking onto her knees.
A moment of silence lapsed, then Peverell said, “Jingoist will be back, you know. He’s not the type to be discouraged by a few figurines of questionable taste thrown his way.”
“But why? What does he want with me?”
“You thwarted him when you sold that book to that thug,” Peverell pointed out. “He hasn’t forgotten about that. With him, it’s a matter of honor. He’s going to take down everyone who’s ever thwarted him if it’s the last thing he does.”
“It will hardly be the last thing. He’ll be alive long after we’re all gone.”
“Doubtful.”
She looked up. “What do you mean?”
“As far as I understand it, this book doesn’t really make a person immortal. It simply heals them.”
“Which turns them immortal,” she pointed out.
He grimaced. “Not really. There’s a difference. You see, a person gets sick, they’re healed, but aging isn’t a disease rather than a natural process. I’m pretty sure that in spite of everything Absinthian priests still grow old, only the process will take much longer than with regular humans.”
The point was moot, of course. Whether Jingoist lived to be a thousand years or forever, that didn’t change a thing. “We still need to find the book and return it to the Elder,” she said. “It’s the only way to stop Jingoist.”
“Yes, it seems that way,” Peverell admitted grudgingly. He seemed like the type of man who rarely agreed with anyone, feeling his own ideas were always superior to anyone else’s. But then of course that was probably the only way anyone ever became a billionaire a few times over, Harry figured.
“Have you seen Buckley?” she now asked.
“Buckley… is busy,” Peverell said vaguely.
“Busy doing what?” What could be more important than taking down Jingoist or finding the Clavicule Necroire?
“Busy taking care of his legacy,” Peverell said, but refused to elaborate.
Harry found it hard to believe Buckley would desert her, but the old ghost was probably tired of the trouble and strife that had cost him his life and had perhaps already moved on to the next plane of existence, wherever that was. Maybe he was up in heaven right now, enjoying a well-deserved sojourn. His karma would have been expunged from saving her life from Philo, she reckoned, and she suddenly felt sad she’d never see her old employer again. But such was life. Ghosts didn’t stick around forever.
As if he’d read her mind, Peverell said, “Oh, yes, they do.”
“Ghosts stick around forever?”
“The ones that matter do.”
“What do you mean, the ones that matter?”
“As long as there’s a single person thinking about a dearly departed, a small piece of that person will still hang around,” he explained. “Even though they might have moved on, there will always be a sliver of consciousness remaining on this side, to comfort and support as long as there’s a need.”
She smiled. “That’s a wonderfully comforting thought, Peverell.”
The old ghost grinned back, which was rare for him. “Yes, it is, isn’t it? The only problem is that humans don’t believe in ghosts, so no matter how hard the dead try, it’s difficult for them to get through.” He glanced at Harry. “You can do a lot of good, Harry, as a Wraith Wrangler.”
“I wish I could,” she said, slumping a bit. She decided not to trouble Peverell with her financial woes and changed the subject.
“So can’t you use your ‘superpowers’ to locate the book, Peverell?”
“Not unless I can locate Jingoist, and as I told you, that doesn’t lie within my powers.”
“Right,” she said, slumping a little more still.
“What I can do is go out there and sniff around a bit,” he suggested. “Which is a lot easier for me than it is for you since I’m not bound by the laws governing the physical universe.”
“Would you? That’d be a great help.”
“On it,” he announced curtly, and before she could thank him, he’d popped off again.
It might be just her impression, but Peverell had become a lot less crusty since she’d met him. Could it be that the old ghost was warming to her?
She watched as Darian strode in and out of his mother’s guest bedroom, accompanied by a small posse of cops and crime scene people. With his hair rumpled and a fierce frown slicing his brow he looked very handsome, she thought. He was probably immensely good at what he did, and when he glanced over, she felt her cheeks color and quickly looked away. She was also sure he wasn’t interested in the likes of her, and the words of Tilda Fret came back to her. He hadn’t been with anyone for a long time. So she decided to put the matter of Darian Watley out of her mind and focus on the issues that faced her: where was Jingoist? And where was that darned book?
Chapter 38
Jarrett awoke with a start and glanced around. The sense of déjà vu that hit him was disconcerting, to say the least. He was back at the hospital, and this time, his head was swathed even more tightly in bandages. Deshawn was by his side, in a less than dignified position: his head sagging on his chest, and snoring softly. On the other side of the bed, Jarrett Sr was seated, very much in the same position as Deshawn: head on his chest, making soft whistling sounds in lieu of snoring.
Jarrett frowned before him for a bit, wondering what had induced him to return to this blasted hospital and then it hit him: he’d hit him! Jingoist had hit him over the head with his club, and he’d survived. For the second time!
Without further ado, he gave Deshawn a vigorous prod in the r
ibs. The man sat up with a start and a startled, “Sir?!”
“Deshawn! I’ve been saved twice! This means something!”
Deshawn blinked, still not fully amongst those present. “It does, sir?”
“Of course it does! It means I’m destined for greatness!” He stretched out his arms, feeling the blood pump in his veins and the wonderful life coursing through him. “I’m indestructible! Even nasty immortal priests can’t kill me!”
The noise had woken up his father, who now stirred and snuffled a bit as he tried to focus his gaze on his son. “Jarrett!” he finally cried. “You’re fine!”
“Of course I am, Father. Didn’t you get the memo? I’m indestructible!”
His father eyed him uncertainly, then shifted his attention to Deshawn. “Are you sure he hasn’t suffered brain damage? What did the doctors say?”
“My brain is as good as it ever was,” Jarrett interjected imperiously.
“Quite,” said his father, clearly feeling this wasn’t much of a reference.
Jarrett clapped his hands. “Well? Let’s get a move on, you two lazy birds. We have to get rid of this Jingoist menace once and for all.”
“My God, son! Not again!” lamented Jarrett Sr. “Give it a rest already.”
“Never!” he cried defiantly.
“This stuff will kill you!”
“No, it won’t!”
“It’s the drugs,” Deshawn opined. “They induce a modicum of hubris.”
“I don’t know who this Hubris is you’re referring to, Deshawn,” said Jarrett, “but I’ll bet the fellow can’t take two strikes from a homicidal maniac on the noggin and live to tell—ouch! Hell and blast!” With a deft flourish, he’d torn the IV from his hand, and it hurt like the dickens! “Owowowow!” he now bleated, watching the blood spurt from his hand. “That hurts!”
It took two nurses and a doctor to patch him up again, while he cursed Hollywood movies, where Tom Cruise could tear an IV from his person with a toothy grin one minute and go about his business of knocking out bad guys the next. In real life that stuff was a lot more painful than it looked!